Exploring Dominica with Mike and Cate

For our last sighting adventure on Dominica we decided that we would share a car hire with Mike and Cate from Kealoha V.  Our grand day out started early on Monday 19^thMarch with a dinghy trip over to the hire car office and also the police station.  The hire car office confirmed that they had a vehicle and so Mike and Nicky walked to the police station to buy temporary Dominican driving licences whilst Cate and I stayed with the dinghy.

The PAYS dock where we left our dinghy for the day

It took a while but eventually we had both a vehicle and legal drivers.  Mike, Cate and Nicky took the car and we arranged for them to pick me up at the PAYS dock where we would leave the dinghy for the day.  On my own in the dinghy it was a fast trip on the plane but as I arrived at the dock I realised that all was not well with the engine. The impeller had shredded and, with no cooling water flowing through it, the engine had got very hot.  I left it on the dock to cool down and planned to pull the leg apart to replace the impeller when we got back to BV at the end of the day.

Views from the northeastern coast of Dominica. Bottom:  The small town of Calibishe

Our route took us east across the narrow part of Dominica which got us out onto the northeastern shore.  From here we followed the coast road a few miles looking for Point Baptiste and Red Rocks just beyond the small town of Calibishe.

Red Rocks

We parked at the end of a dead-end road where we took a small path through the undergrowth to Red Rocks. The Rastafarian warden spotted us and came over to meet us.  He was very friendly and described Red Rocks as ‘his little bit of Mars on earth’.

Climbing into the gully

Red Rocks is an area composed of compacted mud which has been eroded into strange shapes.  There’s a deep gully running through the middle of the site which we climbed down into to explore.  In places the gully is a very narrow squeeze to get through and it all felt rather magical.  Carved into the wall of the gully was a small room which the warden described as a meditation room.  He could not tell us how old it is but it was clear the warden had been looking after the site for most of his adult life and had spent a fair amount of time relaxing inside it.

Views south down the coast from Red Rock (top) and to the northwest looking at Morneaux Diables (2824ft)

He was very proud of his Red Rocks haven and took us all over the site before retracing our steps past his small home and back to the car.  On the way he explained all about the flora and fauna on the site.  Clutching our entry fees, he then slipped off to the nearby café for his morning coffee, wishing us well, “from one brother to another… just a different coloured model”.  He was quite a character.

We continued a further 8 miles down the eastern coastline to find the Carib Territory Reserve.  The road down to it was incredibly steep and at one point we wondered if our rather asthmatic hire car would make it back up the hill after our visit. [Ed: we actually stopped and discussed whether or not we should continue in the vehicle or whether we should proceed on foot.  In the end, the heat of the day persuaded us to continue the drive down, reasoning that, if necessary, the lightest person could always drive the car up the steepest bits of the hill, perhaps with the others pushing!]

Columbus called the Kalinago tribespeople, the people who inhabited the Caribbean islands, ‘The Caribs’.  They were fierce warriors and an uneasy relationship started when the European settlers colonized the islands.  On Dominica, fighting was largely superseded by trading although there was one bloody massacre.  Sir Thomas Warner, the Governor of St Kitts, had a son with a Kalinago slave woman from Dominica and another son, Philip, with his English wife. When Sir Thomas died, the Kalinago son had no one to protect him so he fled to Dominica and became a powerful chief on the island.  The exact circumstances of the massacre are unclear but in 1674 Philip was sent to Dominica to quell the Kalinago.  The two half-brothers met for a feast but it is said that Philip stabbed his half-brother to death and his troops massacred the remaining Kalinago at the feast.  The French named the site, located on the western side of the island, Massacre Village and it is still called that today. In retaliation, the surviving Kalinago took revenge by attacking Marie Galante, killing all of the settlers and sticking their heads on poles on the beach; now called Massacre beach.

The remaining Kalinago retreated into a small area on the windward coast of Dominica and in 1903 this land, the Carib Reserve, was given to their descendants by the British.

The Kalinago Culture Village

Today the Kalinago are mainly engaged in farming and fishing.  They apparently still make their traditional canoes by hand although the example we saw at the culture village had definitely seen better days.

The tribespeople were very skilled at pottery and carving and we saw examples of their craftwork for sale in the village.  We also watched the ladies weave a variety of coloured baskets.  This skill has been handed down through generations and it alleged that the baskets can be woven so tightly that they are watertight.

Sadly, the village had been badly damaged by Hurricane Maria and many of the displays and small huts had been blown away.  When we visited they were in the process of rebuilding them but we were not able to see the traditional bread making display or their display of music and dance.

Crayfish River waterfall

However, walking about the site our indigenous guide gave us a good explanation of how the tribe’s culture is maintained and how the land is jointly owned by the people.  The site meanders down to the beach divided by Crayfish River which makes for a picturesque focal point for the settlement.

The site may not have been at its best, but we were still glad that we had visited to understand more about the original inhabitants of the islands.  We were, however, all getting rather hot and so our next destination was planned to include a swim to cool off.

Emerald Pool

Emerald Pool is one of the most visited sites on the island.  Having parked the car we should have had a beautiful 10 minute walk through rainforest to find the small grotto surrounded by tropical plants, flowers and ferns.  Sadly, here too Hurricane Maria had wreaked havoc and the rainforest was distinctly defoliated and bashed about.  The waterfall and pool were still very picturesque but it will be a while before the full jungle paradise scene grows back.

On the plus side the site was very empty and there was just one other small group of people there when we arrived. By the time we had changed into swimming costumes, we had the place to ourselves.

Emerald Pool – a great place to cool off

Having cooled off with a refreshing swim in Emerald Pool, our thoughts turned to a late lunch.  Roseau was a convenient stop on the way out to Trafalgar Falls and so we went to the same restaurant there that Paul had shown us when Nicky, Peter, Jackline and I had our trip to Middleham Waterfalls.  The local food hit the spot again and, replete, we continued on to our penultimate destination for the day, Titou’s Gorge.  Unfortunately, the same road-block and landslip work that had affected our trip to Middleham Waterfalls a few days before, stopped us from reaching Titou’s Gorge so we left that as a ‘one for next time’, back tracked and headed for Trafalgar Falls.

Trafalgar Falls - the twin waterfalls plunge 125ft and 75ft

We needed to make a bit of a detour but, eventually Nicky’s navigation got us to the site.  The view of the 2 waterfalls from the viewing platform was excellent but we wanted to get closer.  Cate and Mike had scrambled up a few days before with a guide from Roseau and had said that the warm water pools below the falls were wonderful to swim in.

The boulders under the 125ft waterfall were surprising effective (and large) obstacles blocking our way

The right hand 75ft waterfall

However, clambering up towards the left hand, 125ft waterfall took a lot longer than we had anticipated.  The huge boulders at the base of the fall made for a serious obstacle course and hampered our progress considerably. Higher up we could see the area that we wanted to get to, but we were running out of time.  We knew that part of the waterflow at that higher point has hot, heated by volcanic activity, and it would have been nice to have climbed high enough to reach it.  However, we were all very conscious that we still had a long drive up the western coast of the island on a road that was just single track in places due to landslides. It was not a journey that we though that we should make after nightfall and so, reluctantly, we turned back without having reached the hot springs area.

The journey back went well but, despite our early retreat, it was still well past dark by the time that we got back to Portsmouth.  I was concerned about our overheated outboard but fortunately we were not the only yachties arriving back at PAYS.  That was jolly convenient for us because the duty PAYS chap was getting ready to run the other crew out to their yacht and he was happy to give us all a lift.  So, we set out on his boat, towing our dinghy with its poorly engine behind.

Changing the impeller on the outboard

Safely back aboard BV, I removed the leg on our overheated outboard and began the game to try to find all of the little bits of rubber from the shredded impeller.  When I thought that I had found sufficient numbers of the pieces, I fitted a new impeller and then put it all back together.  But because it was now very dark and we had an early start planned for the morning, the field test would have to wait until the following day, after our sail to Pointe À Pitre on Guadeloupe.

Prince Rupert Bay, Dominica